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Conditie

When a Dutch person says (s)he has a ‘bad condition’, (s)he most probably means that (s)he has ‘no stamina’ or is ‘in bad (physical) shape’. Often, ‘conditie’ in Dutch is used as a synonym for ‘voorwaarde’, in which case it refers to the terms or conditions that are part of an agreement or deal.

Note that when it regards ‘stamina’, ‘conditie’ can be used with both verbs ‘hebben’ and ‘zijn’: ‘in goede conditie zijn’, or: ‘een goede conditie hebben’.

Examples:– “Sander probeert in goede conditie te blijven, dus na deze DWOTD gaat hij hardlopen.” (“Sander is trying to stay in shape, so after this DWOTD he will go running.”)

– “Na jaren gerookt te hebben, was de conditie van de man allerbelabberdst .” (“After having smoked for years, the man had zero stamina.” Note that the adjective ‘belabberd’ means something like ‘extremely bad’ (or: ‘rotten, lousy, rough’). The Dutch language allows for one more step in the sequence [noun]-[comparative]-[superlative], which is created by preceding the superlative with ‘aller’. So in this case ‘allerbelabberdst’ is really very very very bad.)

4 thoughts on “Conditie”

Thanks, as always, for the work you put into this.
I was wondering whether there was a word (“in”, I would have thought) missing from this example:
“Dit huis is een slechte conditie; ik zou er niet te veel voor bieden!”
If not, could you, perhaps, explain why it’s not necessary?
Many thanks.

Hi Alastair, you are right, thanks for spotting this. There should be an ‘in’ there, I will add it. Actually, ‘een’ can be replaced by ‘in’:
“Dit huis is in slechte conditie.”
(in general it is in a bad state).
You can also say:
“Dit huis verkeert in slechte staat.”

Hey, maybe a bit late, but one thing I never understood: why are some Dutch words ending in ‘tie’ seemingly pronounced like they were spelt ‘tzie’? Is it just an arbitrary rule – does that apply to all ‘itie’-ending words? The most obvious example I can think of is ‘politie’.

Hi David – it’s never too late for a good question 🙂
Actually I think it applies in general to words ending in ‘tie’.
When preceded by a vowel, the pronunciation becomes ‘tsie’, e.g. “gratie”, “repetitie”, “motie”, “executie”. Can’t think of one ending in “etie”.
When preceded by a consonant pronunciation is more like ‘sie’, e.g. “corruptie”, “actie”.